Introduction 9 



It is desirable to call attention to the fact that in 

 this respect the present case accords perfectly with 

 doctrines of nature generally in their bearing on human 

 welfare. No matter how vitally such doctrines may 

 have turned out to affect human life, they had in the 

 first instance no reference to such an effect. To illus- 

 trate: it probably did not occur to Copernicus till his 

 work was done that his heliocentric hypothesis of plan- 

 etary motion would be of much significance for men's 

 religious and moral beliefs and conduct. And so was 

 it with Galileo, with Vesalius, with Kepler and with 

 Darwin. Nothing could have been remoter from Dar- 

 win's thoughts as he was working out the natural selec- 

 tion hypothesis than the fact that it would be made 

 such use of as the Germans and others have put it to. 



I dwell briefly upon this general principle with the 

 hope that I may thereby win something of tolerance if, 

 despite my anxious effort to be as simple and lucid as 

 the topics treated will permit, I shall yet seem need- 

 lessly technical and shoppish and recondite. 



Perhaps I had better state here in as bald a way as 

 I can what the standpoint is in which I have so great 

 faith as a medicament for the bloody and deadly 

 philosophy of life which has come to dominate the 

 world, and which Germany has outstripped all other 

 countries in exploiting. The kernel of it is that the 

 unifying, the coordinating forces of nature all na- 

 ture, but particularly animate nature are far more 

 fundamental and potent, and so philosophically sig- 



